Monday, August 03, 2009

Summer of slippers (update) and appendicitis

I have a free moment today, because the rest of my family is out of town right now. School has been extremely busy, but great. Only a week and a half left of the summer session...

First, status on the Sand Hill Crane family which hangs around in our neighborhood:

They walk through our yard once or twice a day, going from pond to pond in the neighborhood, and eating flowers on their way (which has been annoying to our neighbors). These birds are great fun to watch! The little guy is getting so big!

Okay, so when I last wrote, I had some ballet slippers knit but not felted. Here are two pairs of ballet slippers, both knit to be the same size, one pair felted and the other pair not felted:

Here is another pair, which I felted at the same time as the ones in the above photo, and which were knit to be a smaller size, but which ended up being about the same size:

I am wondering if that is because they are a lighter color??...since lighter colors often don't felt as well?

And, I made two sets of clog slippers (one for my nephew, and one for my 6-year old) that look a lot like this:

I wanted all of these to be anti-skid, so I did some research.

I read about using puff paint on the bottom of the slippers, applying it as cute little shapes, which then dries and is non-skid for a short while, but which would have to be re-applied every so often.

I read about using some stuff that can be purchases at Menards which people use to dip tool handles into in order to achieve a rubber coating on them, but this looked messy, and if I messed it up, there was no way to get it off of the slipper (and to be honest, it looked rather industrial, and not like a cozy slipper).

I read about using caulk (as in caulk like you apply around the top edge of a bathtub), but this also looked quite messy and industrial.

I finally decided I'd go with some anti-skid fabrics. I tried two types.

The type which has the little raised foot shapes was made out of canvas, having edges which unravelled significantly, so I serged around the edges in order to contain the threads, prior to sewing them onto the slipper bottoms.

Yesterday was the big party, and I gave away four pairs of slippers to all of my nieces and nephews, and they were LOVED by all of the recipients (they all put them on their feet and started walking around with them on outside).

Also, by some strange twist of fate, they all *FIT* the feet of their intended wearer, too! I felt like I won the lottery, except without all of the money...

In unrelated news, a few weeks ago, my brother noticed a slight pain in his lower right abdomen. Then he put in a new floor. Then he ran a 10K race. More than a week later, he thought he should maybe have it checked out by the doctor, but he had two days remaining to work in order to get a perfect attendance (for the quarter) award, so he went to work for two more days, and finally took himself to the emergency room. They determined that he *may* have an appendicitis, so they took him to surgery that night, where they realized that his appendix had ruptured, who knows how much earlier, but sometime during the prior week, and his insides looked like hamburger. So, after a much larger incision was made to scrape out the infection and rinse his insides, he ended up with a six night hospital stay. He lives in the area, so I was able to visit him in the mornings and walk around the unit with him... He's doing much better now, and we're all breathing a huge sigh of relief.

I've actually finished some other projects, and have made some progress on some languishing sweaters. More on that very soon! (Did I mention that I have only a week and a half left of school for the summer?)